IT WAS delightful to grab a Cavalier Daily on Friday and see the headline "University to increase hourly pay rate for staff." It's comforting that even in the midst of a budget crunch, the administration is thinking of its own. Unfortunately, hundreds of staffers at the University remain in salary limbo, unable to do anything but stare enviously as their coworkers' pay increases. These, of course, are the contracted employees, who, despite the best efforts of a very dedicated group of students and faculty, continue to be deprived of a living wage. With employee salary once more on the minds of Wahoos, it is high time to revisit the living wage question and the methods for making it a reality -- namely, by directing energies at Attorney General Jerry Kilgore and the state legislature, not President John T. Casteen III and the Board of Visitors.
The arguments for a living wage hardly need to be rehashed. It is morally indefensible to allow someone to work a full-time job and not pay them enough to support their family. Or, as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Web site (www.livingwagecampaign.com) puts it, "When subsidized employers are allowed to pay their workers less than a living wage, tax payers end up footing a double bill: the initial subsidy and then the food stamps, emergency medical, housing and other social services low wage workers may require to support themselves and their families even minimally. Public dollars should be leveraged for the public good -- reserved for those private sector employers who demonstrate a commitment to providing decent, family-supporting jobs in our local communities."
Moral claims aside, the economics of the situation do not justify holding back a living wage. In Baltimore, a living wage city, a 1999 study by faculty at Johns Hopkins University found that there was not a precipitous increase in unemployment but instead a heightened level of productivity resulting from the living wage. The study further found that "the evidence suggests that higher wages and hours improve the stability and reliability of the workforce." The reason behind that trend is obvious: It is far easier to be motivated when you know you don't have to go straight from one job to the next just so your children can have food to eat.
So why doesn't the University require companies that bid for its contacts to maintain a living wage? Quite simply, because it can't. Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Leonard Sandridge has repeatedly affirmed -- correctly -- that the University is an organ of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and bound by the legal opinions of the state's counsel, Attorney General Kilgore. This is not a cop-out response intended to shoo away the pesky workers asking for more money; indeed, conversations with high-ranking members of the administration and the Board of Visitors will reveal that many of those in the upper echelons support a living wage. However, the fact remains that President Casteen and the BOV, even if they were so inclined, are simply legally incapable of telling Aramark to offer a living wage or forfeit their contract. Blaming the administration for the lack of a living wage is akin to blaming the IRS agent for an unfair tax code; he does not make the policy, he simply implements it.
The one man in this Commonwealth who can strikingly affect the pay scale landscape is Attorney General Kilgore. In a December 2002 opinion, Kilgore found that "a 'living wage' requirement is unrelated to the goods or services to be procured and, therefore, is not authorized under the Virginia Public Procurement Act. Accordingly, a locality does not have the authority to require contractors to provide a 'living wage' to their employees as a condition to the award of a public contract" (www.vaag.com). Until Kilgore or a subsequent attorney general reverses that opinion, the University's hands are tied. Thus, the estimable efforts of the living wage campaign should be directed squarely at Richmond.
Kilgore's opinion, while legally dubious -- it is quite clear that if a company was using slave labor they would be disqualified from contract bids -- has its basic foundation in Virginia law. Advocates of the living wage should first press the Attorney General office to reverse his decision. If that fails, however, influential senators and representatives must be deluged with phone calls and letters demanding that the legislative core of this fundamentally unfair ruling be rescinded. Hopefully, it will not be too long before The Cavalier Daily can proudly proclaim "University to increase hourly pay rate for all employees".
(Elliot Haspel's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ehaspel@cavalierdaily.com.)
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